[[link removed]]

‘CARE IS A POLITICAL ACT’: MADRE’S GLOBAL LEGACY OF ORGANIZING
AND SOLIDARITY  
[[link removed]]


 

Eleanor J. Bader
April 18, 2025
Ms. Magazine
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ There are moments in history when liberatory movements are
ascendant, and moments when we are constrained. Staying mobilized in
these moments of constraint or backlash is critical. _

MADRE’s long-term goals are far-reaching: ending gender violence,
winning abortion and reproductive rights, advancing climate justice,
and building peace and social justice throughout the world, (MADRE).

 

In the mid-1980s, neither Amnesty International
[[link removed]] nor Human Rights Watch
[[link removed]] considered rape a weapon of war or categorized
sexual assault as a violation of human rights. But MADRE
[[link removed]] did. The 40-year-old, U.S.-based global
feminist organization helped correct these egregious omissions. 

The group’s legacy includes numerous other accomplishments: MADRE
was one of the first domestic organizations to partner with
international LGBTQ+ and Indigenous activists and was one of the first
to analyze foreign policy through a feminist lens. 

And while much has changed since 1985, its work continues to be
multifaceted. MADRE is not only involved in political and legal
advocacy but also provides direct financial assistance to
organizations in more than 40 countries—from Afghanistan to
Yemen—to address war, environmental calamities, and political
crises. In addition, MADRE provides skills training, strategic
planning, and leadership development to organizers who work with women
and girls, allowing them to maximize their effectiveness in promoting
peace, racial justice, and disability and LGBTQ+ rights.

MADRE’s long-term goals are far-reaching: ending gender violence,
winning abortion and reproductive rights, advancing climate justice,
and building peace and social justice throughout the world.

Yifat Susskind, 
[[link removed]]MADRE’s
longtime executive director, spoke to _Ms._ reporter Eleanor J.
Bader following the organization’s 40th anniversary celebration in
mid-March.

ELEANOR J. BADER: MADRE BEGAN AFTER A GROUP OF WOMEN VISITED
NICARAGUA IN THE EARLY 1980S. HOW DID THE ORGANIZATION DEVELOP?

YIFAT SUSSKIND: In the early 1980s, attorney Michael Ratner
[[link removed]], a founder of
the Center for Constitutional Rights [[link removed]],
represented a Nicaraguan woman named Mirna Cunningham
[[link removed]],
who was a medical doctor. Cunningham later became the Minister of
Health under the Sandinista 
[[link removed]]government, but years
earlier, she’d been detained by the anti-Sandinista “contras”
and sexually assaulted. She brought the first international legal case
seeking to prosecute sexual violence. 

A group of women in the U.S. heard Cunningham’s story and were
inspired by it. They began communicating with her, and Cunningham
eventually invited them to her community where they met with a number
of Nicaraguan mothers. These mothers urged the delegation to return to
the U.S. and tell people about the anti-Sandinista violence they were
experiencing, violence that was paid for by U.S. tax dollars. The
Americans promised to speak out about what they’d learned. Most U.S.
residents had no idea that the U.S. was funding the contras to
undermine the Sandinistas.

The efforts of these American women led to the formation of MADRE.
They used the word “madre” in tribute to the mothers they’d met.

BADER: HOW DID THE GROUP EVOLVE TO DO HUMAN RIGHTS WORK IN 40
COUNTRIES?

SUSSKIND: Our focus is on the world’s most marginalized people:
young women and girls; Black and Indigenous communities; refugees;
migrants; people with disabilities; and those who identify as
LGBTQ+. 

All of the groups we work with share our political vision. We’re
also clear that we’re not a humanitarian aid organization but are
instead working to build a world where human rights are a reality for
everyone and where everyone has access to resources including
education, healthcare, and political rights.

Responding to human rights violations that result from U.S. foreign
policy has always been part of MADRE’s DNA. Of course, much has
shifted since the 1980s. But while it’s hard to draw a direct
correlation between U.S. industrial policy and climate disasters in
any one place, we know that the U.S. has an outsized share of
responsibility for the environmental crisis. 

BADER: HOW DOES MADRE APPROACH ORGANIZING? 

SUSSKIND: We work specifically in the contexts of war and
environmental disasters and have a robust system to make grants in
emergency situations. Often an initial action grows into a long-term
partnership. For instance, in March 2015, there was a massive
earthquake in Nepal and we gave an emergency grant to a coalition of
Indigenous women’s groups. Ten years later, we’re still working
with them to develop regenerative agriculture projects and ensure that
government aid is distributed equitably. We’re also helping them
monitor the government to make sure it abides by its commitment to
the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
[[link removed]] (CEDAW).

Our work happens on three fronts: We make grants, we support
grassroots groups to strengthen their organizations, and we do human
rights advocacy. Everyone needs funding for their work, but when you
partner with nascent or grassroots groups, they often need more than
money. Our partners regularly ask us for training on topics like
digital security and institution building so that they can make
headway in achieving their political objectives. Moreover, our
extensive human rights advocacy program supports them in changing the
underlying conditions that cause their problems. These problems—war,
environmental degradation, racism, sexism, homophobia, and
ableism—typically originate far outside of our partners’
communities. For that reason, we focus on getting them to the tables
of decision-making, often at the national and global levels, and equip
them with skills and strategies to influence the policies that impact
their communities. For people who have faced historic exclusion and
discrimination because they’re female, queer, rural, poor,
Indigenous, or otherwise marginalized, having the backing of an
international feminist organization makes a difference. We’ve seen
how partnering with MADRE opens doors to the rooms where policy is
made. 

BADER: WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER TO BE MADRE’S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT? 

SUSSKIND: We’ve always been on the cutting edge of human rights
work, expanding the human rights system to meet evolving global
challenges and protect more and more people. Forty years ago, we were
one of the first groups to say that women’s rights are human rights.
Today we’re thinking about the Rights of Nature.
[[link removed]] Although this is still outside
of a conventional human rights framework, we’re part of global
movements to expand our collective vision of what is possible. We’re
looking for levers of influence to boost the idea that nature has a
right to exist and that the trees, oceans, animals, and mountains are
part of an ecosystem that is essential to all life. At first, this
idea sounded crazy to many people, but today, the Rights of Nature are
codified in Ecuador’s Constitution. 

In addition, we recently worked with a coalition of Indigenous women
to amend CEDAW to incorporate recognition of Indigenous rights
[[link removed]] for the first time.
Indigenous women made it happen with support from MADRE and we’re
now working on implementation.  

BADER: DO YOU HAVE ANY REGRETS OR INSIGHTS ABOUT ORGANIZATIONAL
MISSTEPS OR THINGS MADRE MIGHT HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY? 

SUSSKIND: In the early 1990s, MADRE launched a campaign throughout the
U.S. called “Healthcare: We’ve Gotta Have It.” We’d been
working in countries where universal healthcare was provided, so we
wanted to get a movement going domestically. The campaign fell flat.
But a dozen years later, universal healthcare became a major political
issue. Maybe the effort was just ahead of its time.

Still, this raises an interesting question. As organizers, when do you
start where people are, and when do you step out in front?

BADER: WE’RE NOW EXPERIENCING TREMENDOUS POLITICAL BACKLASH. HAVE
THE CUTBACKS TO USAID
[[link removed]] IMPACTED
MADRE OR YOUR PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS?

SUSSKIND: The groups we work with are generally too small to be USAID
recipients but they live in communities that are often dependent on
U.S. aid for job training, agricultural development, healthcare,
vaccination programs, toxic waste clean-up, education, and more. This
means that many local women’s organizations are having to pivot
from, say, programming on ending domestic violence to meeting
people’s basic needs. Care work—whether at the household or
community level—is largely what women do, so we’re seeing
under-resourced local groups scramble to meet urgent needs exacerbated
by the dismantlement of USAID. Unfortunately, these groups can’t
satisfy the demand and people are already dying. The pain of cutbacks
and loss of assistance has never been evenly distributed, and the
impact is always worse in places where people have been made poor.

BADER: GIVEN THIS, WHAT ARE MADRE’S CURRENT PRIORITIES? 

SUSSKIND: Right now we’re focused on protecting our partners from
the worsening repression that is a knock-on effect of growing U.S.
authoritarianism. For instance, we’ve been working with
the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq
[[link removed]], which is fighting to keep its NGO status and
we’re helping with the emergency relocation of women’s rights
activists in countries where their efforts are increasingly
criminalized. 

Overall, we’re seeing backsliding from democracy in many places and
we’re doing what we can to protect those who are in harm’s way.
We’re also trying to find ways for people to safely resist the
repression. Finally, we’re working to preserve the vision of what we
want in the world. Right-wing governments and movements may be
lowering the bar on human rights, but we can’t allow them to lower
our own sense of possibility.

There are moments in history when liberatory movements are ascendant,
and moments when we are constrained. Staying mobilized in these
moments of constraint or backlash is critical. One of the ways that
MADRE does this is by using the idea of motherhood as a political
metaphor. We believe that if care were an organizing principle not
just of parenting but of politics, it would go a long way towards
alleviating the suffering we see in the world and creating conditions
where people and the planet can thrive. It is now more important than
ever to keep this North Star visible.  

_Eleanor J. Bader is a freelance journalist from Brooklyn, N.Y., who
writes for Truthout, Lilith, the LA Review of Books, RainTaxi, The
Indypendent, New Pages, and The Progressive. She tweets
at @eleanorjbader1  [[link removed]]._

_When Ms. was launched as a “one-shot” sample insert in New
York magazine in December 1971, few realized it would become the
landmark institution in both women’s rights and American journalism
that it is today. The founders of Ms., many of whom are now household
names, helped to shape contemporary feminism, with Ms. editors and
authors translating “a movement into a magazine.”_

_Today, Ms. remains the most trusted, popular source for feminist
news and information in print and online. Its time-honored
traditions—an emphasis on in-depth investigative reporting and
feminist political analysis—have never been more relevant, bringing
a new generation of writers and readers together to create the
feminism of the future._

* International Women's Rights
[[link removed]]
* Violence Against Women
[[link removed]]
* Human Rights
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]